


Dear You

by Fweeble



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, feudal Japan as a theme, mentioned/implied past Kaneki/Rize, please refer to notes at the beginning for more information
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:43:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6337036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fweeble/pseuds/Fweeble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's a liar, thief, and murderer -all ninja are. </p><p>"You shouldn't trust me," he says.</p><p>Kaneki doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kammy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kammy/gifts).



> For the anon who requested [Prompt 030: Death](http://fweeble.tumblr.com/post/135602993733/apparently-ive-hit-500-followers-so-heres-the) and Kammy, who once expressed dismay that TouRiko in KaneHide-centric fics tended to be thrown by the wayside and hold little to no importance.[ Title blatantly stolen from this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjNVPO8ff84), which has plagued me for quite some time.
> 
> This is _very_ loosely based off the Fire Emblem games (predominantly 7, 8, 13, and 14) with many of their popular tropes played with. Prior knowledge of these games, or familiarity with them, is not at all required.
> 
> Classes used in FE14 are used and referenced (samurai, ninja, pegasus knight, blacksmith) but do not necessarily fill the same niche as they do in the game(s).
> 
> Feudal Japanese ideals and terms are referenced, and because of this, all weapons are their Japanese /Hoshido counterparts from FE14. 
> 
> Class prejudice is in this. (Aka: Ninjas are sneaky, unscrupulous assassins and spies and samurai are honorable warriors who serve a liege lord.)

  
He is stained the first time they meet. Darkness oozes slowly from the matted nest of his hair, drips from his fingers.  
  
The enemy’s tactician lays at his feet, throat open, staining the floor in the same color as his assassin.  
  
“Well, that’s that,” the man says brightly as he runs sticky fingers through sticky hair. “How long are you going to keep that thing on me, anyways? I’m exhausted and we’re comrades.” He motions at the Washuu crests that adorn his clothing, smile disarming.  
  
Kaneki doesn’t move, naginata at the ready. “I was given orders to dispatch of the field commander.”  
  
“And he’s dead. Good job all around, right? Now either kill me or let me go back for a much needed bath. It hurts me that an ally would hold me at weapon point.”  
  
“I make it a point to never trust assassins. You spin deceit as easily as you spin shuriken, it is your trade. You’ve traded in your honor for coin; your loyalty to your liege lord changes the way the seasons do.”  
  
“Bushido, huh?” The man says. “First time I’ve seen a samurai wield a naginata.”  
  
“Honor isn’t restricted to the samurai,” Kaneki says.  
  
\--  
  
Their second meeting is in spring, the sakura in full bloom.  
  
He catches the blond man sneaking out of a noblewoman’s room, dark bruises decorating the pale column of his throat.  
  
When the man sees Kaneki, he smiles and waves. He makes no attempt to cover himself and his badges of dishonor.  
  
“The lady is married,” he tells Touka when he seeks her counsel.  
  
“Then it’s easy, isn’t it? Report her.” She polishes katana she will never use, carefully oils them to prevent rusting, hands efficient and steady even as Kaneki knows her heart is anything but.  
  
“She will be put to death,” he says softly. It is one thing to have death on the battlefield, Kaneki knows, but it’s an entirely different matter now, when death is a solution that solves nothing and only soothes bruised egos. “Her lord husband is not a kind or forgiving man.”  
  
“Your honor or his; either way, it gets stained.”  
  
\--  
  
In the end, Kaneki never has to say anything.  
  
The lord and lady are summarily executed within a week for treason.  
  
The blond man is not.  
  
“Why are you not dead too?” Kaneki demands as he pins the other man to a tree in a secluded area of the compound. “What lies have you spun, assassin?”  
  
“I wish you wouldn’t disparage me so,” the man says, ever-present smile decorating his face. It makes Kaneki hate him, this man who can still smile as blood is spilled. “I’m just doing my job. You fight on the front lines with honor as your reward and duty as your shield. I do what I must, honor my price and duty my burden.  
  
“I’m alive because there are things I can do that you cannot. I’m here because I’m needed.”  
  
Kaneki lets him go, disgusted.  
  
“This is why I hate you ninja so,” he spits as he turns on his heel.  
  
“That’s too bad,” the man says softly, “because that’s exactly why I like you.”  
  
\--  
  
A flaxen haired woman arrives, a troubadour of a foreign religion.  
  
“Why are you here?”  
  
The royal heir is leading the inquiry, the blond man by his side.  
  
“My name is Kosaka, Kosaka Yoriko. I travel here to seek aid and to offer my services. As you know, our land is not fertile and we are on the brink of starvation. For generations, our kings have warned that if we continue on the path we are on, it will lead to the destruction of our people. Yet we continue on as we always have.” Her fingers grip her staff tightly, knuckles whitening. Her tears wet the floor. “I offer everything I have in exchange for my kingdom’s protection under your care once this is over and you are victorious. I cannot stand to see my people suffer any longer.”  
  
Matsuri steeples his fingers, head bowed forward in contemplation. Minutes drag on. The woman remains on her knees, bowed forward in supplication.  
  
The blond man stands, still as any proper guard, face divested of its usual mask. His brow is furrowed, the corners of his mouth downturned, and his eyes –his eyes, which Kaneki had been certain held nothing but lies and empty words –are filled with an emotion Kaneki cannot confidently identify. Pain, he thinks, perhaps even a touch of sadness. Guilt.   
  
It is the first time Kaneki has seen him as what he is –a man, fallible but capable of sympathy and, perhaps, kindness and empathy.  
  
“That staff,” Matsuri finally says, “can you use it?”  
  
“Yes, my lord. Healing the sick and wounded was a part of my duties as a cleric.”  
  
She makes her vows to serve under the Washuu and the man has donned his mask once again, as if it was never off.  
  
\--  
  
“A blond vassal that serves directly under the royal heir?” Itori muses thoughtfully, tapping her chin. “You can only mean one man. Nagachika Hideyoshi.”  
  
Kaneki frowns at the name. “Why is a man with a name like that not a samurai?”  
  
“You’re so cute,” she says, pinching his cheeks as if he were a child. “What use do names serve for ninja? He didn’t arrive with a name; he was given one.”  
  
It makes sense –if they do not value their honor then their name holds no real worth. If they can switch allegiances as often as they change their clothes surely they can do the same with their names.  
  
“Why do the lords employ ninja,” Kaneki mutters. “We can win the war without them.”  
  
She titters, amused. “Oh, Kaneki-kun. Always so naïve, blinded by your idealism.” She drags her brush across pristine white paper and asks, “Kaneki-kun, why do the Washuu employ me?”  
  
He blinks, taken aback. “You are a skilled onmyouji,” he says. “Your divinations are accurate and your advice has turned the tide of many battles. You are an indispensable member of the court.”  
  
“Why do the Washuu employ samurai?”  
  
“Because they are honorable and swift; deadly and willing to lay down their lives for their lords.”  
  
“The pegasus  knights?”  
  
“They have an aerial advantage which allows for superior maneuvering for tactical positioning and the rescuing of wounded soldiers.”  
  
“You understand where this is going, don’t you?” Itori says as she grinds more ink for her talismans. “Why do the Washuu employ ninja?”  
  
Kaneki says nothing.  
  
She smiles as she looks him in the eye. “Because battles and wars aren’t won with honor and strength alone. As you said, I am not prized for my battle prowess, but because of the information I offer. Intelligence is vital to any war, Kaneki-kun, and spies are the easiest, most efficient ways of obtaining them.” She starts on a fresh piece of paper, draws a man with his throat slit, blood pooling on the floor, and holds it up to him, teeth showing as she grins. “And assassination is also the quickest, most efficient way of dealing with a troublesome general or lord, isn’t it?”  
  
\--  
  
“ _Fuck you_ ,” Kaneki hisses as he presses against the gaping wound.  
  
“Sure.” Nagachika coughs wetly, blood staining his hand. “All you had to do is offer.”  
  
“I would have been _fine_ ,” he insists, horrified by the terror that leaks into his voice. “I didn’t need a _ninja_ intervening.”  
  
“It wasn’t my intention, I promise. I tripped,” Nagachika manages to say. He wheezes with every breath, blood stains his hand with every fit of coughing that wracks his body. “That’s me, clumsy.” He laughs only to be cut off by a fresh wave of coughing, as if disembowelment is a mild convenience, as if his life isn’t spilling across the battlefield with every pulse of his weakly beating heart.  
  
“Don’t you _dare_ close your eyes, you bastard,” Kaneki curses, even as the other man promises he won’t with the same kind of light carelessness all his words always have –empty and worthless. As bereft of honor as the man. The man smiles as he closes his eyes, a liar in life and death, Kaneki thinks as he sheds tears for a man he never thought he’d mourn.  
  
“ _Kaneki_ , dammit, _let him go_. I can’t get him to Yoriko if you keep clinging to him!”  
  
He blinks, eyes refocusing, and sees Touka trying to wrest Nagachika from his grip. Her pegasus waits behind her with his wings lowered, prepared for his rider and the wounded.  
  
“Use his muffler,” she instructs after she and Nagachika are both mounted. “Make sure to tie it tightly; he falls off and he dies.”  
  
Kaneki ties the muffler around Touka and his savior as tightly as he can.  
  
\--  
  
“You shouldn’t trust me,” Nagachika warns.  
  
“I don’t,” Kaneki promises.  
  
\--  
  
He sees Touka with Yoriko, heads bowed, under the falling red and gold leaves of autumn. Tenderly, their foreheads kiss, their fingers intertwine, and Kaneki knows without being told.  
  
“You should be more careful with your heart and who you give it to,” he tells Touka later. No one truly trusts Yoriko, who has already betrayed a liege lord once and is of a different, opposing religion. She preaches the teaching of the dragons of water, as parched and barren as her land is, and not of the sun.  
  
“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” she says, voice hard and sharp, a sword she has never before taken against him.  
  
“I’m just worried about you,” he says.  
  
“You know _nothing_ ,” she accuses, “Not of me, not of Yoriko, and certainly not of matters of the _heart_.”  
  
\--  
  
“You spend too much time in your head,” Nagachika says from his perch high in a persimmon tree, “and not enough time listening to your heart.”  
  
“Don’t listen to other people’s conversations.”  
  
“It’s my job,” he says, shrugging. He tosses down a ripe persimmon, a peace offering. “And you’re both too loud.”  
  
Kaneki changes tactics. “She is my sister, in battle and in my heart. I don’t want her to make a mistake that could cost her so much.”  
  
Nagachika’s smile changes into something new, something that, to Kaneki, manages to look both adoring and betrayed. “People make mistakes, it’s human to err. It is those mistakes that sometimes makes life worth living.” He jumps down, places a comforting hand on Kaneki’s shoulder before turning away. “It’s something you’ve never understood,” he says as he leaves Kaneki, alone with only his thoughts and their words.  
  
\--  
  
Yoriko is the best cook in the army.  
  
She makes dishes that are not native to their land but, Kaneki learns, is probably native to Nagachika’s.  
  
“I haven’t had this stew in years,” Nagachika marvels as Yoriko hands him his share. “It brings back memories.”  
  
“I’m sure it does,” Yoriko says.  
  
She looks sad, Kaneki decides, and wonders if it is his meddling in her affairs or homesickness that mars her pretty features.  
  
\--  
  
Banjou hands him a new naginata and tells him to check its balance.  
  
“If I’ve designed it correctly, it should give you an advantage over axes and bludgeoning weapons,” the blacksmith says. “It’s a bit heavier than the traditional iron naginata, though, so I’ve shortened the shaft a bit so it’d be easier to wield. It does decrease your reach, so remember to take that into account.”  
  
“I will, thank you, Banjou-san.”  
  
“You should get some practice with it before taking it into battle.” Banjou hesitates, shifting his weight uneasily from one side to another before asking, hesitation and worry clear on his face, “Are you and Touka-san fighting?”  
  
“No,” Kaneki says firmly. There’s nothing _to_ fight about, he thinks. Touka is just stubborn, caught up in the sweetness of puppy love.  
  
The large man nods slowly, too kind to disagree with him, too honest to take Kaneki’s words at face value.  
  
“It’s just that,” the man says gently, “she looks close to tears most days and you look…”  
  
_Guilty_ , he does not say.  
  
\--  
  
Touka is wounded the next battle and Kaneki is inconsolable with grief as he sees Touka wrapped in bandages and lying on a futon, pale and fragile.  
  
“You’ve done this to her,” he sobs as he holds her hand in his, thumb brushing over her delicate wrist. “You and your affair; you’ve driven her to distraction. She would’ve dodged that arrow,” he laments. “I’ve seen her do it hundreds, thousands, of times. When she is on her pegasus, she commands the sky.”  
  
Yoriko sits by Toukan’s side, exhausted from overexertion, from knitting flesh and bone with nothing but faith and iron will alone. Her back does not bow under the weight of his accusations and although her eyes are red-rimmed and wet, she does not cry. She sits by Touka’s side, holding Touka’s other hand, voice strong and clear when she says, “I will not apologize for loving her.”  
  
Nothing and no one can remove her from Touka’s side and, begrudgingly, she earns Kaneki’s respect when she says, “I will not leave her side, not even in death.”  
  
\--  
  
Touka punches him while her dominant arm is still in a sling.  
  
“Don’t you _ever_ make her cry again,” she says, eyes fierce.  
  
“It wasn’t me she was crying over,” he whispers, heart in his throat.  
  
There had been a time when he feared he’d never see her like this again, red-cheeked and furious.  
  
“And I won’t make her cry again,” she promises herself, voice thick with too much emotion.  
  
“That’s not a promise any soldier can make,” he says, heart hurting for her.  
  
“I _know_ ,” she says as tears overwhelm her.  
  
She cries in his arms like she did when she was five and scraped her knee and he runs his fingers through her hair like he did then, eyes misty as he thinks of all the hardships she’ll have to endure because of this foolish, foolish love.  
  
\--  
  
“I’m glad you’ve made up,” Nagachika says during their next meal, crowded around the base camp’s fire.  
  
“I thought I told you to stop listening in on other people’s conversations.”  
  
“I didn’t,” he says, gesturing with his chopsticks. “And I'm wounded that you haven’t noticed that I’ve been away for a couple of weeks. I’ve been gathering intel.”  
  
The thing is that he _had._  Kaneki had been acutely aware of the ninja's absence, dogged by a sort of under-the-skin-itch that hadn’t eased until the blond had sat down beside him with his tray of food.  
  
“I hate gossip,” Kaneki says instead.  
  
Nagachika tuts as he sips his miso soup. “Gossip is how I get most of my intel, my dear sir, so don’t turn your nose up at it. Besides, I didn’t need that to know.” He nods at Touka and Yoriko’s direction and continues, “It isn’t painful to look at, anymore.”  
  
“What isn’t?”  
  
The blond smiles, that soft, secret smile that drives Kaneki to frustration and anger.  
  
“The way you look at them.”  
  
\--  
  
The snow falls heavily one morning after several significant victories, a good omen for the upcoming New Year. The Washuu busy themselves with plans for festivities to keep their countrymen pleased and not with war.  
  
“I need you to do me a favor,” Touka tells him after the soldiers are dismissed for the day. “Give this to Nagachika,” she says as she hands him a package, “I owe him, a lot. He’s been…” she hesitates and Kaneki knows he had been the one she had gone to when she and Kaneki had been at odds, the one she had sought advice and comfort from when she had needed it the most. “It’s candy,” she explains, “Yoriko made his favorite.”  
  
“Give it to him yourself, Touka. It’s the only proper way to express your appreciation. And he’d prefer it that way,” he adds to soften his words, “we both know he would. He could use the company.”  
  
A ninja is an observer, Nagachika had said, never a participant.  
  
A ninja, Kaneki had learned, is always alone.  
  
“I would,” Touka says worrying her bottom lip, “and I _should_ , but…”  
  
The town is filled with vendors, the streets filled to bursting with stalls and people, and Touka wants to show it to Yoriko. She wants to show Yoriko the bright colors and the smiling citizenry, wants to point at them and turn to Yoriko and say, _‘I decided that this was worth dying for. I decided you were worth risking everything for.’_  
  
She wants to hold Yoriko’s hand under the night sky as fireworks burst overhead, to kiss her, soft and sweet, fingers entangled.  
  
Because she’s nineteen, foolish, and so in love it hurts.  
  
Kaneki knows this because he had felt that love once, too, is intimate with the dizzying rush that accompanies it.  
  
He touches the scar, just above his right kidney, feels the dull ache of a kunai piercing him, and remembers the pain in his heart as lovely painted lips parted to laugh at him, mocking.  
  
“Okay,” he says as he prays for her love to end better than his, as he begs the gods to watch over her and to keep her safe, to protect her beautiful heart from the trials that have scarred his. “Have fun, Touka.”  
  
_Be safe_ , he doesn’t say.  
  
_I will_ , she promises with her smile.  
  
\--  
  
He finds Nagachika in his room.  
  
The spy’s room is nothing like Kaneki thought it would be.  
  
Thousands of colorful folded cranes decorate it, strung from the ceilings like paper wisteria blossoms, tiny bells at the ends, chiming happily with every playful tug of the wind.  
  
“Nagachika?” he asks, knocking on the wooden frame of the open paper door.  
  
“Hey, Kaneki!” Nagachika greets, smiling like he always is. Colorful pieces of paper are scattered across the table before him, bold, black words painted on them with a careful hand. “What brings you to my humble abode?”  
  
“Aren’t you cold?” Kaneki asks, shivering a little as a playful winter wind plays with the hem of his overcoat. “Can I come in? And close the door?”  
  
“Yeah, a little,” Nagachika admits and waves at Kaneki to come in. “But I love this season. I love to watch the snow fall.”  
  
Kaneki takes a seat on the other side of the table, feeling awkward and out of place as Nagachika returns to writing.  
  
“So, uh, I brought this,” Kaneki says as he places Touka’s gift on the table. “She says…thank you.”  
  
“About what?” Nagachika says flippantly as he eagerly opens the bag, his face transforming with pure _delight_ when he sees its contents. “Oh boy, oh boy, oh _boy_ , whatever I did to earn this, tell her I’m glad to do it a million times more if it gets me more of these treats!” He immediately pops one morsel into his mouth and hums. “ _Heaven_ ,” he says emphatically, “are lazy winter mornings by a fire and an endless supplies of this.”  
  
Kaneki smiles weakly, ready to excuse himself after clearing his throat when Nagachika says, “You can stay, if you want. No one ever comes by and I know there’re always a lot of people going in and out of your room. Don’t you have a book you’d like to finish?”  
  
“How do you know there’s a book I’ve been reading?”  
  
“You’re _always_ reading,” Nagachika snorts as he returns to his task. “And I’ve heard you moaning to Touka about how little quiet time you get to actually do that. I don’t mind the company if you don’t.”  
  
Kaneki weighs the pros of finishing his book on foreign battle tactics and the cons of spending time with Nagachika off the battle field for longer than fifteen minute bursts.  
  
“Alright,” he agrees slowly. “Thanks.”  
  
Nagachika writes on colorful pieces of paper and folds them into cranes and Kaneki turns the pages of his book until night comes and the promise of dinner lures them from their sanctuary.  
  
\--  
  
It becomes a habit to visit Nagachika’s room during the short, fleeting moments of free time he has.  
  
He even has permission to use the other man’s room when the man is away on a mission.  
  
Kaneki spends a lot of time during those days telling himself not to think about how the man is lying, presenting himself as someone he is not, ingratiating himself to people who know no better, who put their trust in him when they shouldn’t. He tries not to remind himself how he has become friendly –has become _friends_ –with a _ninja_.  
  
His scar aches on those days, even as the weather warms and flowers begin to bloom once again, and he spends most of his time in the room with his fingers pressed against the puckered, discolored skin, lost in thought, eyes unseeing as he stares at the pages of his books.  
  
\--  
  
“What do you think about the gods?” Yoriko asks in the spring as they march out to another battle.  
  
“The gods?” Kaneki repeats because they aren’t something he has thought of since he was a child, alone and parentless, so sad and hurt at the world, by the world.  “I don’t. I don’t think about them.” He expects her, a cleric of a religion that worships the dragons of water, to be hurt, but her expression is thoughtful and… something else. “The miracles we need aren’t the miracles of dragons, but of men,” he says with finality.  
  
He thinks the emotion he can’t quite put his finger on is wariness.  
  
Maybe living among strangers, the only blue flower in a sea of orange, does that to a person.  
  
“What do you think about them?” he offers because he thinks he understands her a little better now, of the loneliness she must suffer, an outsider in the very country she works for.  
  
She surprises him when she says, very quietly, “Terrifying and best left alone.”  
  
\--  
  
It isn’t uncommon to see Yoriko and Nagachika together. They are both outsiders, after all, strangers that share common ground together that they can find nowhere else in this country.  
  
So it shouldn’t raise his suspicion, but Nagachika looks like a different person, his face so overcome with helpless sorrow and Yoriko is crying so freely, Kaneki finds himself listening in without meaning to.  
  
“I came because of you,” she insists softly.  
  
“And you shouldn’t have,” he says gently as he wipes away her tears.  
  
“I hate them,” she says, voice so defeated and small. “They took you away and then they… _Look at what they’ve done to you_.”  
  
“Don’t cry, Yori-chan,” he murmurs as he pets her hair softly, her face buried in the folds of his yukata. “Don’t cry.”  
  
“They’re driving you into a corner,” Kaneki thinks he hears her say, her voice so quiet he has to strain to hear it. “At this rate, you’re going to die.”  
  
“Don’t cry,” Nagachika continues to soothe, “everything will be fine. You will have all the time in the world, Yori-chan, you and everyone else. You will have a long and happy life with Touka-chan.”  
  
Yoriko cries harder.  
  
\--  
  
Touka enlists his help without his consent to buy a present for Yoriko on their anniversary.  
  
“It needs to be _perfect_ ,” Touka says as she holds up a pair of earrings for inspection in one hand and a bracelet in the other. “With that in mind, which do you think is better?”  
  
The last time Kaneki shopped for jewelry, it had been a ring. He remembers it clearly –a small garnet polished until it glittered under the sunlight and inlaid in wrought silver. He remembers saving every spare coin he could for months and months, remembers agonizing over the selection of rings when he had finally enough to buy one worthy of her finger. He remembers finally settling on the garnet, its deep red her favorite color.  
  
He remembers Rize smiling when she received it, the same smile she had when she twisted her kunai deep in him.  
  
“I don’t really know my jewelry,” he lies weakly.  
  
She smiles ruefully at herself, guilt shining in her eyes when she says, “You’re right. I don’t either. Maybe something else would be appropriate.”  
  
They settle on silver-and-gold enamel butterfly pins with tiny, sparkling amethyst in their delicate wings.  
  
“They’re perfect,” Touka declares, eyes shining.  
  
\--  
  
They meet Ayato on the battlefield.  
  
Touka’s heart shatters and Kaneki thinks of the Kirishima family heirlooms, the katana she so dutifully maintains in the absence of her missing younger brother, hopeful for his return.  
  
“How could you disgrace your family so?” he demands as he brings his naginata up and across only to have it be parried by Ayato’s precise, skillful swing of his sword. _How could you break your sister’s heart?_  
  
Ayato sneers, an ugly look Kaneki never thought he’d see on the face of the young boy who brought a wounded bird to him, crying. This was the little boy who nursed a bird with a broken wing until it could once again fly. “You don’t know _anything_ ,” he says, echoing words his sister had once said months ago.  
  
“I know _enough_ ,” he says fiercely. “I know who you are and I know what you’re doing now brings dishonor to your ancestors, to your parents, to your _sister_.”  
  
Ayato laughs.  
  
It’s an angry, barbed thing.  
  
\--  
  
“I heard you and Yoriko,” he says when he slides open the door to Nagachika’s room and finds him sitting there, folding paper cranes like he always is. “You called her Yori-chan.”  
  
Nagachika’s face doesn’t change. He hums.  
  
“You _know_ her. You knew her before she came here. You two are hiding something.”  
  
“Do you know my given name?”  
  
“ _Answer me_.”  
  
“I am,” Nagachika says lightly. “Do you know my given name?”  
  
“Hideyoshi.”  
  
“Hideyoshi,” Nagachika agrees serenely. “Do you know what it is that makes the Washuu clan royalty when other clans are not? Do you know what gives the Washuu the right to rule?”  
  
“Divine right,” Kaneki says, frustration building. “The blood of dragons flow in their veins.”  
  
Nagachika taps a finger to his nose. “Exactly. Now, I’m sure you’ve asked and you know as well as I do that the ‘ _yoshi_ ’ in my name is a completely different character than the one that is so often found in Washuu names. But still, it is rarely used outside the Washuu clan, isn’t it? Have you ever wondered why, since I was given this name upon arriving in this country, they would choose it?”  
  
Kaneki bristles. “Watch what you say,” he warns the other man, “depending on the words you choose, it could border on treason.”  
  
“Is it treason if it’s true?” Nagachika muses thoughtfully, fingers worrying a crease as he folds another crane, always another crane.  
  
“There are plenty of heirs to the Washuu clan, why would they need you?”  
  
“Why indeed,” Nagachika says as he reaches for another paper.  
  
“Who is Kosaka Yoriko?” Kaneki demands.  
  
Nagachika’s shoulders slump, his fingers unsteady as he continues folding paper after paper.  
  
“I guess you could say she’s like Touka.” For the first time since the conversation started, Nagachika looks up. Their eyes meet and Kaneki realizes that the blond has been holding back tears. “She’s my dear, sweet sister who still chases after me like she did when the Washuu took me away all those years ago.”  
  
“Why didn’t they take her, then?” _What makes you so special?_  
  
“Are you and Touka connected by blood? I have many brothers and sisters that I left behind in my homeland, Kaneki Ken, and none of them are related to me by blood.”  
  
\--  
  
“He’s a liar,” he says to Touka, “a liar and a thief and a murderer with no honor. His word holds no weight.” He looks up at her, confused and in need of guidance, “But he says things and I find myself believing him. Find myself _wanting_ to believe him.  
  
“He says things that cannot be true,” Kaneki continues softly. _You shouldn’t trust me_ , Nagachika had warned many months ago. And he had agreed, then, that he didn’t. That he wouldn’t. But he thinks he does now, despite everything.  
  
Despite _Rize_.  
  
Touka bumps his shoulder with hers, rests her head against his shoulder. The familiar warmth of her body comforts him, anchors him like nothing else does. “You know, for a liar, thief, murderer,” she lists, ticking off each descriptor with a finger, “and _ninja_ , he’s pretty honest.”  
  
It doesn’t set Kaneki any more at ease.  
  
“Even when he lies,” Touka says as she kisses his forehead before rising, leaving him to his troubled thoughts.  
  
\--  
  
“What do you write on all those pieces of paper?” Kaneki asks when he finds Nagachika in his favorite persimmon tree, eyes trained on the faraway sea and the horizon beyond it.  
  
“Come on up,” Nagachika says, patting the branch next to him, as if he isn’t three stories up in a tree that required more scaling skills than Kaneki has in his entire repertoire.  
  
Nagachika laughs when he looks down, at the helpless look that Kaneki wears so blatantly, and drops down a rope. Because of course he has rope, Kaneki thinks bitterly, a proper ninja is always prepared to scale trees and walls and all sorts of things. In the name of spying and other less savory duties.  
  
“What do you write down on all those pieces of papers?” he repeats once he has reached Nagachika and has settled himself against the sturdy expanse of the tree’s trunk, more comfortable with it against his back than empty air.  
  
For a moment, Kaneki thinks Nagachika will, as he usually does, deflect the question, change the topic, gloss over the answer, or outright lie. Instead, the man studies the setting sun for a few, long seconds before replying, “Wishes.”  
  
“Wishes…?”  
  
“My wishes,” Nagachika confirms, smiling wryly. “Have you ever heard of the myth of a thousand cranes? If you fold one thousand, you can make one wish and it will come true.” Nagachika laughs and it sounds bitter and mournful and it makes Kaneki’s heart constrict painfully, his stomach bottom out in a way reminiscent of the fear that gets his blood pumping on the battlefield, but not quite. “When I first came here, all I could write was ‘ _I want to go home_ ’ and then it was ‘ _I want to be free_ ,’ then ‘ _I want to be clean again_.’ But now it’s just little things. ‘ _I hope it’s sunny tomorrow_ ,’ because I have laundry duty that day or ‘ _I hope we have sakura mochi for dessert_ ’.”  
  
  
It’s sympathy, Kaneki tells himself, that has disguised himself as anguish. That the soft, honest way Nagachika talks about himself, how clearly broken he is despite the mild smile he likes to hide behind don't twist his heart the way it does is because of anything but pity. Pity over how simple these wishes have become after Nagachika has abandoned all hope.  
  
“Why did Yoriko say you’re going to die?”  
  
Nagachika’s gaze returns to the horizon and the fading, golden sliver of the sun, and smiles, the first true smile Kaneki thinks he has ever seen on the other man.  
  
“We are at war, after all. No one knows when they will die.”  
  
It terrifies him, that smile.  
  
\--  
  
“You need to stop this,” Kaneki says when he slips into Nagachika’s room in the dead of night.  
  
Nagachika taps his chest and says, “This heart pumps the blood of dragons. Don’t worry, I heal quickly.” He sits up, parts his yukata, and peels away bloody bandages to show shiny, pink new skin.  
  
“Yoriko was inconsolable. She tried to heal you and the wound _wouldn’t heal_ ,” Kaneki digs fingers into his palms because he thinks he’ll throttle the man across from him otherwise. “You _traumatized_ her.”  
  
The smile finally fades as Nagachika recoils, hurt. “I didn’t know the blade was blessed. Besides, if it had been any one of you other than me, you would’ve been dead.” He lies back down, turns his back to Kaneki. “I’m sorry for scaring her but I won’t apologize.”  
  
“You’re an _asshole_ ,” he snarls as he digs fingers into Nagachika’s shoulder and yanks, rolling him onto his back.  
  
“You’re crying,” Nagachika says.  
  
“ _Shut up_.”  
  
“Your heart is racing,” he says more softly.  
  
“It hasn’t stopped racing since I saw your fucking _entrails_ on the floor.”  
  
“Your hands are cold,” he whispers.  
  
“So warm them up,” Kaneki says.  
  
\--  
  
“We shouldn’t do this,” Nagachika warns, because that is all he does, Kaneki has come to realize. He warns and does nothing.  
  
Nothing but cling tighter when Kaneki sucks dark, angry bruises onto pale skin and thinks of the times he has seen other people’s marks on Nagachika, feels emotions as dark and angry as the marks he leaves on the blond man thrumming hot in his veins, and leaves more. He leaves them in the crease where hip meets thigh, the dip of Nagachika’s back, in that secret spot behind an ear, half-hidden by tangled, sweaty gold.  
  
_I’ll be the last person to leave these on you_ , he begs as he burns more onto Nagachika with the heat of his hungry mouth, even as he knows that even this simple wish will never come to pass.  
  
“We shouldn’t,” Nagachika gasps as he welcomes Kaneki into him.  
  
“We shouldn’t,” Kaneki agrees as he threads their fingers together and leans in for a kiss, the closest to ‘ _I love you_ ’ as either can manage.  
  
\--  
  
Nagachika is there in the morning, illuminated by the early sun’s golden rays, sleep-tousled and disheveled.  
  
He smiles like there’s nothing wrong.  
  
He’s heartbreak.  
  
And Kaneki breaks with him.  
  
\--  
  
He visits Yoriko in the gardens where she can usually be found and he asks her, “Why is Nagachika going to die?”  
  
And she smiles the same smile that Nagachika always wears and his voices shakes when he demands, “Don’t _ever_ show Touka that smile.”  
  
“I never want to have to,” she says, eyes wet, still smiling that same, empty smile and Kaneki hates –he _hates_.  
  
Because nothing makes him feel more impotent and useless.  
  
“Why does he have to die?” he rephrases.  
  
“Because,” she says looking towards the sea she cannot see, blocked by the Washuu garden’s tall trees and even taller walls. “Because the war will end soon.”  
  
\--  
  
“You’ve been close with that ninja lately, right?” Banjou says after he chases him down when he'd spotted Kaneki from across the courtyard. “About this tall, blond, always has a muffler? He asked me to reforge this sword he gave me the other day.” He hands Kaneki a tantou. “I can’t seem to find him but you might know where he would be better than I would, so I was hoping… could you take this to him for me?”  
  
Kaneki turns the blade over in his hands. “Sure, Banjou-san. Don’t worry about it.”  
  
“Thanks!” the other man calls as he jogs away, back to his forge.  
  
Kaneki slides the blade out of its sheath, sees it glow a soft light, and realizes it’s the blessed blade that had wounded Nagachika.  
  
\--  
  
Ayato dies in Touka’s arms.  
  
“You still know nothing,” he coughs, red blood staining his lips. “Even now, none of you know _anything_ ,” he accuses as he laughs sadly.  
  
“I know that I love you,” Touka says just as sadly, his head cradled in her lap, her hands soothing sweaty hair back from his brow.  
  
He looks at her like he used to when he was four and she was his little savior, the champion who chased away the other samurai children who dared to laugh at her frail, sickly brother, all adoration and love.  
  
“Goodbye, sister,” he breathes, a smile on his face.  
  
Touka blinks back tears, wipes what does fall away with the back of her hand and demands Kaneki help her secure Ayato to her pegasus. “Ayato is coming home with us,” she says.  
  
Kaneki looks at Ayato’s smile and sees nothing but Nagachika.  
  
\--  
  
“We’re going to win soon,” Nagachika says as he folds another crane.  
  
Kaneki wonders when winning the war began to sound like losing everything.  
  
\--  
  
They lay siege to the citadel for weeks. They whittle away at the defenses until, finally, they break past the gates and into the stone heart of it all.  
  
“We’ve done it!” Matsuri breathes when they reach tall stone doors with intricately carved dragon on their smooth, polished surface, “ _We’ve done it!_ At last, _paradise_!” He turns to Nagachika, “Now, open it!”  
  
“No,” Nagachika says serenely.  
  
“ _Open it_ ,” Matsuri demands. “Everything we seek is beyond this door. Knowledge, power, immortality –paradise.”  
  
“What is beyond those doors is anything _but_ paradise,” Nagachika says as he brings out the tantou. In the back of his mind, Kaneki had always known what it was for, why Nagachika had requested the large nodachi be reforged into a small, easily concealed tantou. “All that is there is the destruction of the world,” he says as he unsheathes the blade. He raises it, rests the sharp edge of it against his throat. A thin line of blood trickles down.  
  
“Do you not remember?” Matsuri hisses, “Are you willing to sacrifice your precious siblings?”  
  
“They died a long time ago and I never knew.” Nagachika laughs wetly. He looks at Yoriko and then at Kaneki, smiles that smile that Kaneki hates so much as he draws naked steel across bare flesh.  
  
Yoriko collapses into Touka in tears.  
  
Kaneki is too empty for tears, too resigned for grief.  
  
Matsuri howls, furious. “The doors will never open now.”  
  
\--  
  
“Nagachika wasn’t a Washuu, was he.”  
  
“No, he wasn’t.”  
  
The mention of Nagachika no longer brings her to tears. Kaneki thinks she has no more, not after Matsuri had demanded Nagachika be left where he was, exposed and unburied. She had done what she could, had performed what funeral rites she could with no body, had prayed for countless nights that her brother’s soul was at rest.  
  
“What was he, actually?”  
  
“Does it matter?” she asks softly as she folds paper cranes. She doesn’t sleep, Touka says, just folds. She folds into the night and the early hours of the morning, but no amount of cranes will ever bring her brother back.  
  
“No,” he admits. Because Kaneki didn’t need to know what Nagachika was to love him –what he was was of no consequence at all. “But I want to know. Because the truth is that I understand little of him and know even less.”  
  
And it hurts that he loved Nagachika enough that it ached, that he woke up nights in Nagachika’s room, staring at the colorful, hanging cranes, the thousands and thousands and millions of them, and wished for Nagachika to be there beside him in the morning when he woke. That every morning he woke up in that room, alone, broke his heart all over again. That, despite how much he missed the other man, how empty his death has left Kaneki's heart, he truly knew nothing about Nagachika.   
  
“The gods were good, once,” she says as she folds another crane. She doesn’t write her wishes down. She only has one. “But something changed –maybe nothing should ever be so long-lived. They became crazed. They destroyed… the world was in ruins before they were finally sealed away.” She picks a up a new piece of paper, a cheerful buttercup yellow, and she stares at it for a long moment before she starts folding it as well. “Brother… Nagachika was the last half-dragon, the son of the water dragon my people had worshipped so long ago. Someone had to stay on this side to seal it and so he was separated from the rest of his family, the only dragon left in this world.”  
  
She pauses, frowns at her hands. They shake –with hatred, or more grief? Kaneki isn’t sure.  
  
“The only one with enough to matter. All the royalty in this world, this country or my country, any country, has the tiniest drop of dragon blood in them, a thimble of dragon’s blood compared to the oceans my brother had.”  
  
She finally looks at Kaneki and Kaneki cannot help but wonder if she sees the same grief staring back at her in his face as he does in hers.  
  
“But we don’t remember it anymore, not most countries anyways. As the centuries dragged on, we created new myths, new legends, for our missing gods. We forgot the scars they left behind and only remembered the distantly remembered good. We promised ourselves great rewards for seeking what should never be sought.” She returns to her crane folding with renewed determination. “That’s what the Washuu thought they were looking for and no matter what my brother said, they would not be dissuaded.”  
  
“But your country… your country didn’t try to open the doors.”  
  
“No, they didn’t,” she agrees softly. “We couldn’t forget, not when we were the guardians of the doors. And with my brother there, the truth could not be forgotten. He was always there to remind us.”  
  
“And we… took him from you.”  
  
“He lived at our temple,” she says, as tears well up again, proof that this was a well of grief that would never truly be dry. “And he taught us –the orphans and the clergy. But one day, a Washuu ninja arrived and, without his dragonstone, he was powerless. They took him.” Her fingers shake with definite fury and she is forced to discard one piece of paper and then another as she mangles them. “They took him and his dragonstone and then they forced him –”  
  
She can’t speak. Kaneki holds her shaking hands in his and she bites out, “And they threatened him with _us_... but they’re all gone now and it’s just _me_.  
  
“I came so we could run away together...but...But I fell in love and could not bear to leave. Not that it would have changed anything anyways," she mutters bitterly, "he had always known he couldn’t run away, not when they had his dragonstone, his core, in their hands. In the end, all I did was come so I could watch him die, just as powerless as when he was taken.”  
  
“I could have run away with him,” he says as he stares at her hands, still trembling in his. “If he had told me the truth, I would have forsaken everything. I would have stolen it back, I would have –”  
  
“And make you forsake your honor? Touka? The family you have here?” Yoriko takes back her hands and laughs, broken and so very sharp. “You understand so little, so very little, Kaneki Ken, of yourself and of the man you call Nagachika Hideyoshi. You have everything he has lost and you think he would let you throw them away?”  
  
Kaneki says nothing.  
  
“He loved you,” she says finally, turning away from him. “He loved you so much he wanted you to be the last thing he saw. He loved you so he lied to you, the only kindness he knew how to give. He loved you, with everything his broken heart had to give. So don’t you dare sully his memory with selfish, thoughtless words like those, Kaneki Ken.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Kosaka Yoriko. For everything.”  
  
She is quiet for a very long time and he rises from his seat to leave.  
  
“You are forgiven, Kaneki Ken. For everything. You and everyone else. My brother had always forgiven us, he was too gentle not to.”  
  
He leaves her to her cranes and her grief and he retreats to Nagachika’s abandoned room and cries in it, surrounded by his own.  
  
\--  
  
“You’ve taken it up too?” Touka says when she sees him folding a crane.  
  
“It reminds me of him,” he says. “He used to write his wishes in them.” He hands her a paper he has already anointed with a wish.  
  
“‘ _Drinking green tea in the garden, in winter, watching the snow fall_ ,’” she reads.  
  
“I opened all his cranes,” Kaneki says as he reaches for needle and thread. “The last ones… were for my happiness.”  
  
Touka’s face screws up in a mixture of pain and sympathy, an attempted smile that looks nothing like it at all.  
  
“So I’m making my own,” he tells her after he finishes stringing twenty five cranes together. “Filled with nothing but all the things I wish we could do together.”  
  
“It’s not healthy,” she says after a moment. “Dwelling on what you wish could be.”  
  
“But I’m dealing with it.” He knots the string after every crane he adds, quick and efficient. “Yoriko and I are dealing with it. Even you have noticed that, as time passes, she is folding less. We all have our own ways of grieving, Touka. Let us do it the best we can.”  
  
She leans forward and kisses his forehead. “Take care of yourself, Ken.”  
  
“I will,” he promises her retreating back.  
  
He writes another wish.  
  
‘ _All of us, sitting in your favorite persimmon tree, watching the sun set beyond the sea._ ’  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Both 'Nagachika' and 'Hideyoshi' are common (or, not _un_ common) names for samurai, hence Kaneki's confusion at his name.
> 
> No, Hide's 'real name' was never revealed. It was easier to keep it obscure than to come up with an entirely new name for him.
> 
> Kaneki is a Spear Fighter but I avoided naming him as such since it just sounds _stupid_ when shown alongside classes with legitimate titles in feudal Japan like "samurai" and "ninja." Haha.
> 
> Cheers.


End file.
